delirious

dear mom & dad,

i'm going to need a nap. let me explain.

it's 4:30 in the morning, which happens to be the time i was getting ready for bed yesterday.

last night i called the cab company expecting to, you know... get a call back confirming. so i stayed up until 11 waiting but didn't hear back so i called another one and requested a 4:45 am pick up because of snow etc. ended up not falling asleep until almost 1:30 am. set my alarm for 4:15 to allow for 30 minutes for whatever.

around 3:30 am my phone rings. when i say it rang. what it really did was scare the crap out of me. i literally jumped up because i thought it was my alarm. but apparently it was some number i didn't recognize so i didn't pick up. laid there for 5 minutes before they called back and i picked up.

conversation with the lady on the phone

her: "hello, so would you be ready in 15 minutes"

me: (still totally out of it) "uhmmm it's 3:30 in the morning, i requested a 4:45 pick up"

her: "yeah but i'll be there in 15 minutes, can you be ready"

me: "..."

so that, is how i ended up at the airport at 4 am long before i was even supposed to get up.

also, on the way over we were sitting at a red light and the cab driver was complaining about how long it was taking to switch. she kept telling me about those little poles that tell them when a car is on it but they weren't working today. uhmm, okay? just wait until it turns green. the lady turns to me and goes "do you think they'd care if i went on red??" hahahhah seriously?! what a fruitcake. she did go on red. and luckily did not get caught. probably because it was 4 am. but even if we did get caught, it would have been already because i probably still would have had a good 2 hour wait at the airport.

anyway, i'm here now. security was good too..and i guess i'm in a conversation mood this morning...

tsa: "do you have a shirt on?"

me: "uhmm yeah......"

tsa: would you mind taking that sweatshirt off?"

me: "okay.."

tsa: "that wouldn't be a hassle would it"

me: (thinking silently, no because traveling with no liquids, taking off my shoes, emptying my backpack of electronics and taking off my coat was not already enough of a hassle) "nope"

i have never ever once taken off my sweatshirt going through security. not even that time that i got caught with a box cutter by accident last year.

to make things better, i got to the gate and checked facebook & saw one of my friends status's said they were also in the rochester airport!! so i had someone to talk to for at least a while :)

now the debate on whether or not to get breakfast because my stomach is already growling and i'm not even taking off for another hour.

but see you soon!

love,

a soon to be delirious skeeter.

tweet tweet

new feature: twitter feed on the right column. i was really skeptical of this invention at first. who the heck cares what i am doing every second of my life but then i realized that i could talk about all of the hockey i wanted and no one could yell at me :) so, i've started updating more frequently ya know.. to test out the waters.

RIT game last night was excellent. they won 8-0 can't complain about a game like that! great goaltending and play all around. back at the rink tonight at 7:05 for another shot at canisius. watched miracle this morning. the USA Finland game yesterday. Canada game too. tomorrow is the USA Canada men's gold game. and next wednesday the Capitals are back at it playing the Sabres. yay hockey! it's been suggested that i get on a 12 step program to recovery... :) that won't be necessary! there is no such thing as too much hockey.

anyway, i'm all packed and ready to go. stayed up until 4 something in the morning last night so maybe we won't try that again because my flight is at 6:50 am :) looking forward to a week of break and hanging out.

i'm coming traveling buddyyyyy.

11 and counting

(taken around 2:30 this afternoon, 11 inches of snow)

(taken around 11 this morning, 7 inches of snow)

it's actually pretty hard to see in the pictures how snowy/windy it is and it actually looks like rain on the window but thats only because the heater is right below the frame. we went out last night and everyone on the road was driving superrr slow and it was slippery. there is a lot of wind and apparently we're getting 1-2 inches per hour. it's actually not as bad as they said, i think other cities are getting worse.

tonight is another RIT hockey game!! something to look forward to. glad i didn't fly home yesterday or today there is no way i would have gotten out everyone's flights are being delayed or canceled all together or just going out 3 days later. all of rochester schools (with the exception of RIT, of course) were canceled today... think they're turning into big softies up here. closing schools for 8 inches of snow?!

done done and done

i'm officially 100% done with winter quarter.

had two finals this morning from 8 until 11. the first one was super easy i just got to sit there and zone out (it was presentations but i gave mine last week) the second was an asl interview which was surprisingly nerve-wracking.. i'm perfectly okay with signing until apparently a one on one test but i passed the class with a 98 so i think everything is going to be alright :)

it's been snowing since i got up this morning around 6 and i guess is not going to stop until sunday morning? let's hope flights are on time.

tonight looks like movies, tv shows and hanging around.

tomorrow's schedule looks surprisingly similar with the exception of a hockey game tomorrow night.

saturday more hanging around and another hockey game.

yay spring break.

michelangelo buonarroti

no bugs.

homemade cookies.

studying my brains out for art history.

comfy bed with no little critters.

freshly cleaned clothes in my dresser.

snow falling outside.

jars of clay on pandora.

i'd say it's been a pretty decent day, wouldn't you?

art history final tomorrow at 12:30. pray for a miracle, i'm going to need it at this point.

michelangelo's sistine chapel. started in 1508 completed 4 years later in 1512. there are roughly 300 biblical figures throughout. originally he didn't want to complete the project because he claimed he "wasn't a good painter" uhmm, right. if i said i wasn't a good painter i would most definitely not be able to turn around and create the sistine chapel.

so there is your art history lesson for today. now i only have roughly 50 more images to memorize! then a typography project due tomorrow afternoon. few hours at work. and then i'm basically FREE! i do have two finals on thursday but they don't require studying :)

bugs be gone

don't have much time.

but they are GONE GONE GONE.

i'm so excited i can't even tell you.

now for much rearranging. but first work, studying and four finals.

backyard kickball games

do you ever have like literally every part of your life fall into place?

well, not every part but close enough. it's funny because it's never in the ways i would have imagined or wished for but even better. you can't even plan things like this.

i have a desire to work with children and families that are in need.

oh, so you mean i can go downtown and work with a refugee family with 5 kids? check.

if i wasn't a graphic design major, i'd major in social work. i'm not even entirely sure why i feel that way but i do.

the two people working with the family aren't even social workers, just two people with an incredible love and passion for helping people.

i love blogging.

the social workers that work with this family are looking for people to help blog for their project.

i'm interested in helping out more.

they have more families that need help and are desperately looking for more volunteers.

i'd love to mix graphic design with a non profit job once i graduate.

apparently there is a company looking for designers to help with adoption cases and marketing?

seriously?! this makes me wish i didn't require sleep. so much to do, no time to do it.

(this picture is from a few weeks ago when we went. and it's missing over half of the kids :) )

if you couldn't already tell from the beginning of this post, i went downtown to hang out with the refugee family again. this time, on top of their 5 kids, 3 more kids from downstairs came up to join us which meant one FULL house! but lots of fun. played kickball in the backyard until someone kicked the ball on the snow covered roof :) so we walked 5 or so blocks to the nearest sledding hill and went sledding! tons of fun, i even went down once. the hill was huge! it was so funny, they brought an inner tube that was so big for the kids so we had to squish about 5 of them on it. only downside of the experience was my COLD toes. seriously frozen! they are still defrosting.

now it's time to make some oatmeal cookies and get ready for the USA Canada hockey game! hooray for good weekends. i didn't update the past two days but it included much hanging out, hockey, late night Jay's diner runs and other fun things. oh, i did go to an art history review session so yes i did remember that this is finals week coming up! no finals tomorrow though :)

sometime this week i'll write up a post talking more about the ROW project when i have more time.

a thing called love

i think i'm in love with a thing called tweet deck. ya know, like twitter? someone in the admissions office introduced me to it this past week and it's fantastic. it's currently a beta version but i'm assuming it's here to stay. it's so organized and helpful. you can have all of your social networks mixed into one place that's in a separate application from your web browser. i love it because after you read something you can delete it, comment on it, "like" it all in one place as well as update your status for more than one thing at a time. uhm hello major time saver.


also on my list of love is google reader. i follow between 30 and 40 blogs on a regular basis. design blogs, food blogs, people blogs. you name it, i read it. some update everyday, some even multiple posts per day while some are more of a weekly thing. either way, google reader is amazing for combining this all into one location that i can star, unread, read, etc. just lovely.

continuing on the path of organization.. folders. i'm a huge fan of folders. one main followed by 480 subcategories to help sort my every need. with my recent recipe diving obsession, these things are a major plus to my daily life.

and while i'm glad that each of these entities exist and i love organization. i dont know what i would do if they all combined into one lovely box of yay. that would just be too much for one to take in.

got any other computer organizational tips for me?

bedtime: headphones required

on monday they installed a lovely bug counting device on the bedroom floor. good idea in theory. except when you factor in the loud beeping noise every 5 seconds. literally. every 5 seconds. all night.

it certainly does not make for ideal sleeping conditions. sure, it's fine once i've fallen asleep but getting to that point is not pleasant. which is why i've been starting to get in bed around 10 or 10:30 this week in anticipation of it taking forever. i've taken to listening to my ipod and putting a blanket and pillow over my head. last night took, oh.. maybe 3 hours. i eventually gave up and moved out to sleeping on the couch. much better plan. except then i woke up around 6:45 and couldn't fall back asleep. so here i am, watching gilmore girls until a more reasonable hour. going over to casey's in a while to work on some video editing and what not.

speaking of sleeping and all that.. yesterday i had an 8 am class. i have to leave at 7:30 or i won't make it on time because it's on the complete opposite side of campus. so i set my alarm for 6:30 to have enough time to get ready. well, go figure... alarm didn't go off yesterday. so i woke up on my own and was immediately surprised by how light 6:30 was... uhmm, that's because it was 7:26. so, grabbed some clothes, threw on shoes and ran off to class. the night before it had so nicely snowed 4 inches and they hadn't plowed anything which meant that i got to run through snow piles. but i made it to class on time! except class only lasted about 20 minutes (we only reviewed about 4 things...) which was super annoying because it took me longer to freak out and run over there than the actual time spent in class. but i got to go to work early and then leave an hour and a half before, so yay.

oh! good news. so next year i'm moving in with casey and two other girls into a UC apartment (the nicest ones on campus!). i'm so excited but yesterday got even more exciting when i found out that it is being renovated over the summer! which means an entirely new apartment and furniture. i'm thinking that this is some way of making up for the past year in housing :) i just wish it was next fall already!!

ash wednesday

spring break is tantalizingly close.

mycourses our online discussion and paper turn in site is not working which is quite frustrating but all that matters if that i am finished with my paper and presentation and aside from watching other people's presentations at 8 am in the morning next thursday, i am done. wow that was a long sentence, i got out of breath just typing it. oh! apparently in mentioning it in my blog post, it decided that it could cooperate and upload my document, hooray!

finished up my photography critique and final today. typography final critique was today as well although i have a few changes i need to make and reprint so i most likely will not finish that up until next tuesday.

week ten apparently makes me extremely ADD. shiny objects, the olympics, online recipes.. you name it, i've been distracted by it. everything imaginable seems better than finishing up projects which is funny because i don't even mind the projects. i just keep of thinking about so many other things i could be doing.

went to an interesting online blog thing today at the admissions office. when i say went to, it was just 3 counselors and me sitting in a room watching the computer. i think it's called a webinar? some guy that is really good in dealing with higher ed marketing and what not was running it. glad i went, now the only problem is i have so many ideas floating around my head and no real time to put them into action. we'll see.

dinners this week have been pretty relaxed. would have taken a picture of tonight's but my camera died right as i clicked in the button. oops. reheated some frozen chili from months ago and mixed in some of the pineapple rice that i made last week and am still working on finishing. seriously, i made enough rice for a small army, who would have thought. also, i've been eating canned peaches all week and i finally finished them up today so i had a little extra juice left which i mixed with some VG splash. good thinking. just ate some frozen raspberries and strawberries after class. i gave up chocolate for lent and luckily i gave away those oreo balls to my bible study group on monday so i don't have those taunting me.

now, it's bedtime. yes, that's right it's currently before 10:30. but 6:30 am always comes sooner than i think and i think after a day of finals and finishing a paper i deserve a good amount of sleep. my body will thank me tomorrow morning.

good news and a bucket full of yay!

i finished my deaf lit presentation this morning!
we convinced my professor to switch our paper from 10 pages to 6!
i've already written 5.5 of the 6!
i'm almost done with my typography project!
i'm finished with the 1st of 3 chapters for art history!
i finished my photography project and it's all cut out and done!
i ate frozen tofu chicken fingers for dinner because i was too lazy to cook!
...but i'm watching the food network so i can pretend i'm eating fancy things!

that enough exclamation points for you?!!

the don't song

heard this song in church yesterday, pretty funny and it's very catchy! :)

oreo hamburger smush

excellently busy weekend. yesterday morning was spent editing pictures for my photo project. it took 4 hours in the lab to finally figure out the printing and color setting levels and all those other shenanigans. but it's done (aside from cutting it down). went to dinner at tc riley's with mike... after taking the bus for the second time in my life, guess i need to get out more :) from dinner we walked over to LBJ and saw the NTID performance of Sleeping Beauty. it was SO good! I had no idea what to expect after the last performance we saw. this one was completely dance and signs which was pretty neat. they had super cool costumes.. which included light up fairy wands. the end was probably the best, after an entire performance using traditional tschaikowsky music they broke out into the black eyed peas hip hop song complete with a disco ball and everything. pretty awesome. walked back here and we made crushed oreo cream cheese balls, as seen above. so good. although the initial crushing of the oreos was in question. with no rolling pin we had to substitute the bottom of a plastic cup! seemed to work fairly well although a tad bit messy when i added the cream cheese. but it was tasty and so worth the mess. watched scary movie 4, the olympics and then a good 3 hours of food network! apparently after midnight i enjoy talking back to the tv :) especially because the food network only seemed to be covering french fry and disgustingly large hamburgers. woke up before 7 this morning (because i had inadvertedly turned off the heat last night so it was 2 degrees) and watched more food network and gilmore girls before going to church around 8:30.

here's a picture of the tofu from last week :)

happy valentines day everyone!! <3

birthdays!

Dear Mommy,

You're pretty awesome.

Happy Birthday <3

I love you!! And MISSSSS YOU!

I promise a redo birthday when I come home! We can just pretend it fell on the right day :)

Love,

emmylou

week 10

pandora is fantastically motivating... i've found about 400 new favorite songs so far.
or maybe it was the walk i took this morning.
most likely the fact that next week is week TEN.
uhoh spaghetti-ohs.

today i:
woke up at 6:30.
decided that was far too early so i slept until 8.
showered & ate my usual honey nut cheerios for breakfast.
dropped off my library books.
walked all the way down to NTID to buy tickets for tomorrow night.
came to the design studio and here i have sat for the past 3ish hours.
writing papers, finishing up my powerpoint due tonight and editing pictures.
mostly editing pictures, in fact, i don't think i ever want to edit another picture in my life.

there's a meeting at work around 3 but i'm not sure if i'm going to make it. got a homework deadline at 5 pm. 10 pages paper to write this week. make that 9, i wrote one this week but it pretty much consisted of my name... sooo not sure about that yet. still got time.

tomorrow is more editing, printing, writing, studying. one week left and then finals!

any book suggestions? I've been trying this new thing where i get into bed 30 minutes before i actually need to be asleep and i just chill out and read! I just finished a Jodi Picoult book last night that I've been working on all week. now it's time to get a new one from the library.

productivity is lacking.

so, i was being productive and all that fun stuff. hanging around in the graphic design lounge...

then the fire alarm went off.

really, guys? just had to be in the middle of my lovely extended break (10 am class got out early). so now i have relocated to the library after frantically searching around for a seat (it's almost finals week, the place is packed). and now i only have about 25 minutes before i have to walk over to my next class. goooo figure.

got a little bit of editing done and then photoshop crashed before i could save :) hopefully something gets done tonight or else i'm going to be in a whole lot of trouble!

and what do i do instead of jump back on the productivity bandwagon. i blog. yeah guys this is bad. real bad. if i could receive an A for every blog post i'd be in luck, however, i don't think that's how it works around here.

tofu bites and rice

lately i've been working on this one meal a week plan and then adjusting it every night so i don't get bored out of my mind. except i'm one to talk about getting bored, i've been eating the same honey nut cheerios for breakfast and a peanut butter sandwich for lunch for way too long now. it's tasty what can i say.

anyway, this week i thought i'd experiment with tofu! originally i was disappointed when we went grocery shopping and i couldn't find any but then I found some at crossroads on campus so everything is fine and dandy. last night i just made pineapple rice and a few tofu bites for lack of time. overnight i let more tofu marinate so i ate that along with leftover rice and added spinach for some green. fruit, veggie, grain, protein... good planning on my part. the tofu is excellent. i didn't really follow any recipe for it though. drained the tofu and then just mixed up soy sauce, sesame oil and apple cider vinegar and then let the tofu sit in the mixture for a while before sautéing. pineapple rice was stolen from the traditional black bean burgers and pineapple rice dinner from home :) minus cilantro because i was lacking in that department.

looks pretty tasty, huh? and there is enough for the rest of the week now that's what i call planning ahead.

let's make it a lovers

my small group is pretty awesome. there is a group of about 6 or 7 of us that get together every monday night from 8-10:30 and just hang out, share stories and talk about the bible. for the past two quarters we've been reading through the book of john. now, john does not have enough chapters to fill up two quarters once a week therefore we have "free days" these days usually include cooking of some sort and then going around to the apartments near us and handing it out! these days usually fall around week 9 or 10 so everyone is super stressed and can really appreciate free homemade food :)

tonight's food adventure was homemade pizza! crust and all.

we each took a designated job and ended up making four pizzas.

picture of most of the small group (minus tim who was taking all of these pictures!)

kneading that dough was a lot harder than we originally thought but the guys turned out to be pretty good at it. we didn't have a rolling pin so we improvised with water bottle. i decided that i will be sticking with my strengths in dessert making and not become a pizza kneader anytime soon.

towards the end we started getting artsy so i put two hearts on. two of the members of our group are from the dominican republic so we're constantly making comparisons between the two cultures and sometimes the translations are not exact. we were in the middle of making pizza (with ham and pineapple) and one of the guys goes "let's make a lover!" what he meant was a meat lovers pizza like from pizza hut :) it was pretty funny so thats why we put the hearts on. plus it's almost valentine's day.

looks pretty tasty, right? the heart on the right got a little bit more mosaic-y because i was funneling it through the end of a sandwich bag and the stuff was just flying everywhere!

next blog post will be my own dinner creation from tonight. i'll combined it with a post for tomorrow because i'm eating the same thing all week. mmmm.

nothing of the sort

jeez, didn't realize it's been almost a whole week since i've been at this.

haven't really made anything particularly blog worthy in terms of dinners lately. homework filled weekend. saw the movie dear john the day it came out-- slightly disappointing but still good. worked saturday morning. sunday was the super bowl so we went over to a friend's apartment.

there's just been a lot of stuff going on right now. not really blogging material. much patience is needed and it's pretty much just going through it one step at a time so i don't accidentally rip my eyeballs out :)

good news this weekend: THE CAPS WON! beat the penguins in overtime 5-4! 14 game winning streak!

olympics start soon, i'm pretty excited for that. 10 page paper due this week, not so excited for that. found some tofu for dinner, also exciting. it's give and take. winter quarter is apparently always going to be disappointing but what can ya do.

found a pretty sweet company in madison wisconsin (ad agency) so it's gotten my internship searching motivation up significantly.

the library is my new favorite work space. except i'm not getting any work done because i'm blogging and thinking about how much i want to read that book i just checked out. perhaps tonight after i wash everything i own. laundry is not high on my priority list right now. after doing 3929320 million loads for the stupid bug treatment every week it's put a serious damper on my love for clean clothes.

there will be some pictures of dinner tonight as long as i don't screw it up. maybe if i do screw it up i'll just photoshop it and lie :) good plan, right?

also, for those of you snowbound people, can i outsource my homework? that sounds like a fantastic idea.

3 point hats

i've often found myself getting ready in the morning and reaching for my 3 point hat and black harry potter cloak. often, this is not enough to complete the whole ensemble so i decide that carrying a half gallon of chocolate milk will fill in the missing elements.

true story. seriously. there are some weird dress codes going on around here. i had to suppress my urge to whip out my camera and document the shenanigans walking in front of me.

i did bring out my camera around dinner time (taking a picture of food in your apartment is so much less creepy than taking one of some bozo trudging down the quarter mile)

sensing a trend in the dinner picks this week? if you guessed sweet potatoes and asparagus, you're right!

in case you're just dying for dinner ideas try:

roasted asparagus (with lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, basil)

broccoli

provolone cheese

whole wheat pasta

cauliflower

(and leftover sweet potato mound on the side)

cook the asparagus like you would normally except instead of eating it whole, cut it up and throw it into the pasta. (obviously when i'm cooking for one person i don't even use half a box of pasta which means that there is plenty leftover for many other experiments.) while you're cooking the pasta put the broccoli & cauliflower in 3 minutes before it's done. drain accordingly. then throw it all back in the pot & add cheese and a little extra lemon juice :) good, healthy & there are leftovers for another 2 meals. what good planning.

food blog

apparently i'm turning this into a food blog. tonight's dinner was mashed sweet potatoes and cauliflower! (notice: more BASIL!) guess i need to try some new seasonings at some point, but it's super tasty. threw a whole sweet potato in the oven when i got back from class. watched an episode of the gilmores and 45 minutes later it was ready. removed the skin and put an immersion blender to it and what do ya know, mashed taters :)

so, should i make a food blog? separate from this one? or just keep my life and food together? i'd keep this one regardless and if i had two, id prolly post some food stuffs on this too. hmm... decisions, decisions.

in un-food news, rochester weather is weird. i walked back from work today and it was a bright sunny 28 degrees but it was snowing. how weird is that?!

lots of stuff going on currently. papers to write. presentations to make. videos to edit. books to read. photos to take and process. art history to study. it's never-ending. but fun. 3ish weeks until spring break, speaking of which i need to buy plane tickets home before i forget.

this weekend is freeze fest. more on that later.

asparagus stars

dinner tonight was lettuce, corn (it's on the bottom because i actually cooked it this time) and roasted asparagus :) doesn't take long at all to make a good dinner. 20 minutes in the oven and a little bit of lemon juice and basil later, you've got yourself some pretty tasty food stuffs.

small group tonight was fun. i got a text about an hour before asking if i could bring a snack (we usually eat something like peanut butter on celery or something else easy) well, it turns out that my night class was cancelled tonight so i decided to make some cookies! just regular oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. apparently if i fail at this whole graphic design thing i'll go into cooking or food design.

schedule smedule

final schedule for spring quarter :)

i went into an advisor today and got signed into the two classes that i needed for my two minors. next step is to officially declare the minors (journalism and advertising & public relations) with a concentration in ASL.

i got signed in ahead of time for 4 of my classes, there is a glitch in the system which meant that at 11:59 the night before for exactly 1 minute i could register for classes. yay system errors!